A large tick infests the small bamboo, and a more hateful insect I never encountered. The traveller cannot avoid these insects coming on his person (sometimes in great numbers) as he brushes through the forest; they get inside his dress, and insert the proboscis deeply without pain. Buried head and shoulders, and retained by a barbed lancet, the tick is only to be extracted by force, which is very painful. I have devised many tortures, mechanical and chemical, to induce these disgusting intruders to withdraw the proboscis, but in vain. Leeches[58] also swarm below 7000 feet; a small black species above 3000 feet, and a large yellow-brown solitary one below that elevation. [58] I cannot but think that the extraordinary abundance of these _Anelides_ in Sikkim may cause the death of many animals. Some marked murrains have followed very wet seasons, when the leeches appear in incredible numbers; and the disease in the cattle, described to me by the Lepchas as in the stomach, in no way differs from what leeches would produce. It is a well-known fact, that these creatures have lived for days in the fauces, nares, and stomachs of the human subject, causing dreadful sufferings, and death. I have seen the cattle feeding in places where the leeches so abounded, that fifty or sixty were frequently together on my ankles; and ponies are almost maddened by their biting the fetlocks. Our ascent to the summit was by the bed of a watercourse, now a roaring torrent, from the heavy and incessant rain. A small _Anagallis_ (like _tenella_), and a beautiful purple primrose, grew by its bank. The top of the mountain is another flat ridge, with depressions and broad pools. The number of additional species of plants found here was great, and all betokened a rapid approach to the alpine region of the Himalaya. In order of prevalence the trees were,—the scarlet _Rhododendron arboreum_ and _barbatum,_ as large bushy trees, both loaded with beautiful flowers and luxuriant foliage; _R. Falconeri,_ in point of foliage the most superb of all the Himalayan species, with trunks thirty feet high, and branches bearing at their ends only leaves eighteen inches long: these are deep green above, and covered beneath with a rich brown down. Next in abundance to these were shrubs of _Skimmia Laureola,_[59] _Symplocos,_ and Hydrangea; and there were still a few purple magnolias, very large _Pyri,_ like mountain ash, and the common English yew, eighteen feet in circumference, the red bark of which is used as a dye, and for staining the foreheads of Brahmins in Nepal. An erect white-flowered rose (_R. sericea,_ the only species occurring in Southern Sikkim) was very abundant: its numerous inodorous flowers are pendent, apparent as a protection from the rain; and it is remarkable as being the only species having four petals instead of five.